Justin Wilson: Don't give thanks for food police

Admit it: One of the things we like best about this time of year is the opportunity to feast with friends and family. Turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, good conversation: All are the comforts of the holiday table that stuff us with joy.

Unfortunately, there's some unwelcome company at the table – and I don't mean that uncle who always creates awkward moments with inappropriate remarks. The nation's "food police" want to classify joy as an addiction, equivalent to a hard-drug addiction.

Yale University academics even created a "Food Addiction Scale" to determine how hooked you are on pumpkin pie and other foods. Others say that foods with fat, sugar and salt "hijack our brains."

Whatever happened to simply being thankful for having food on the table?

There are a lot of common misconceptions about what chemicals that make up our food do to us. Some are urban myths. Think about tryptophan, the protein in turkey that supposedly puts you into a "food coma." That's actually not the case at all, according to the American Chemical Society.

Likewise, potatoes topped with gravy might create feelings of well-being in your brain by influencing neurotransmitters, but they don't make you a junkie. Drug addicts in withdrawal can get the shakes, become paranoid or be driven to violence. People who eat too much at Thanksgiving sleep through the football game.

The "cookies-are-crack" theory sprouts from the fact that food affects the brain's dopamine system, its pleasure center. But lots of things affect the brain's pleasure center. McGill University scientists found that even music does. Does that make an iPod a morphine drip? The idea that we can dumb down the definition of "addiction" to cover snack foods gives you an insight to the activist playbook.

Food, just like music, exercise and comedy, isn't some cocaine-like substance just because it makes us feel good. Even one pro-food-addiction researcher revealingly conceded that "nobody claims that food has [as] strong of an effect" as real drugs on the brain.

Why is food the main course for addiction fear-mongers? Activists hope to use food addiction as an excuse to replace personal responsibility in food choices with government compulsion. They say that foods have "abuse potential" and that people get fat from addictive eating so trial lawyers can feast on restaurants, grocers, and other distributors of food.

The causes of obesity are far more complex than just eating too much; everything from desk jobs to urban sprawl has made us gain weight. The correct response to our collective weight gain shouldn't be lawsuits or food bans but personal responsibility. If we gorge Thursday, perhaps we should go for a walk Friday.

If your family members help themselves to seconds or thirds, you haven't literally hooked them. You may just be a good cook. So, rest easy. After dinner, you'll need it.

J. Justin Wilson is the Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies and consumers to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.